Well I remember one particular day when I was a young boy living in the Angaite village on the bank of the Paraguay River. Earlier that day, and quite unbeknown to me, mom was cleaning out her refrigerator and found an old jar with a couple of pickles left in it. To get rid of them she threw them in the river which was only sixty yards or so from our back porch.

It is a relatively fast-flowing, deep river and usually when you throw something in and it sinks, that is the last time you'll see it.

I went fishing that afternoon and caught a catfish. Fish was always welcome in our diet and so I cleaned it in preparation for mom's culinary attentions. While cleaning it I noticed an unusual lump in the fish's stomach, and being a naturally curious youngster I investigated. Having grown up right there along that river I was familiar with most of the plants and vegetation that grew in the area. What I found in that catfish's stomach was not, I was quite certain, something that grew naturally along the riverbank. In fact, the only source of pickles that I was aware of, was, as I'm sure you have guessed, a pickle jar. Although I had caught and cleaned plenty of fish, this was the first time I'd come across a pickle in that manner. Baffled, I finished my job and left the unscathed pickle on the kitchen counter.

Well, you can imagine mom's reaction when she found the pickle. I'm sure that her curiousity at that point more than matched my own. When we compared notes we figured out what must have happened and it provided some amusement for the whole family.